Unreasonable at Sea day 39-41
Today we woke up and we went to grab a bunch of stuff that we needed. We first went to the electronics store which is a whole “warehouse” area with a bunch of electronics and other stuff mixed in, like hardware stores and stuff. Although it is perhaps really cheap, it is somewhat difficult to find specific items. Bargaining is important.
As we returned and approached the ship, I realized how much dirt had drifted down with the current! And it grew over the course of the day, so much.
PREPPING THE BOAT
And then we built / redid the boat in preparation for tomorrow, testing Protei in the water in Vietnam. I fixed the battery packs that have corroded 
and finally, we were able to integrate the arduino microcontroller motor shield with the electronics and the winches. 
Then we realized the sun was coming up:
TESTING DAY
We head out with boat and bike and equipment and media team. And yay to the year of the dragon.
First we walked to a “lake” as per the “offline maps”. But we saw no lake, only this: 
We met lymai, a very kind generous woman from this small village who had moved to Australia. Now she was home for the holidays, but she was so kind to help us find some water body.
Her daughter was here also, as was her sister.
Then we found the water: 
and we met some kids 
We took a water sample, then head off the lake ho tri anh.
We drove two hours north to the lake. The roads got emptier, but the biking was a bit faster.
So we arrived and got the boat ready for testing.
And here we took some water samples with the opflex 
And then we started sailing:
Then we head back, and grabbed some pho after we returned the bikes. Then we went back to the ship, went to sleep, and overslept a little bit until the next day.
THE WORKSHOP
We each gave our pitches and Tom Chi gave a workshop. The workshop was somewhat interesting, People seemed to have a bit of trouble adhering to the time boundaries during the 26 minute prototyping session, and were asking lots of questions rather than beginning to prototype. But we got some information that was helpful : it is difficult to start a company, takes a long time in Vietnam, lots of legal overhead, and you have to find a Vietnamese partner; Penetrating the government in order to get permission to market and implement our technology is also slow and not so easy; There are a lot of companies including NGO’s that are trying to implement preventative techniques around spaces where industries are causing water pollution due to runoff;
Then we went out to lunch at Phong Tra Khong Ten with Milton Hagler & Anh-Tuan Le from Living Simple, Nicolas Griffon from Godet Antarctica Icy Cognac…
Finally we returned to the ship, bought some weird crackers before doing so, had a “bbq” on the ship, and then in the morning, worked a little bit to wrap up Vietnam, then took off in the morning for Singapore.
ALSO just some reminiscent stuff from Japan: